


Proof of Loyalty

by osprey_archer



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Blackmail, Consent Issues, Crying, Face Slapping, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack swings out of his chair, walks around the desk, and slaps Ianto. Same cheek as Lisa. “Not good enough,” he says. “You nearly get everyone killed because you think you’re in <i>love</i>, you had damn well better be able to explain yourself afterward.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proof of Loyalty

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning** : dubiously consensual kissing.

After they’ve laid Lisa on the autopsy table, Jack orders the others home. They don’t look at Ianto (Ianto doesn’t look at them) as they leave, and Jack just glances at him before ordering Ianto to clean the Hub. 

Ianto cleans because he can’t think. Soon he’s dizzy from the scent of engine grease (Lisa’s blood, under his fingernails, over his hands), he scrubs and scrubs, his cuffs ragged and smudged as he clears the oil. His hands slide on metal (Lisa’s cheek, Lisa’s hand); tremors shudder up his arms and back as he cleans. He has to wash his tears off the floor (didn’t realize he was crying until he saw the smudges, tears swirling with grease off his cheeks.) 

He can hear Jack on the phone: calm, ugly, clearing up the pizza girl. Jack’s voice, unending. He wants to kill Jack. 

He wants to kill Jack.

He wants Jack’s blood on his face, under his nails, he can taste it (it tastes like engine oil—no, that’s Lisa, Lisa). The whole world is engine oil. Lisa, the cyber-thing that was Lisa, drips engine oil off the autopsy table. Ianto cleans and cleans and jumps when he thinks he sees her moving. 

Does he hope he sees her move? Fear it? No movement. His cheek throbs. 

She hit him. Earlier. She hit him. 

Jack shot her.

He wants to kill Jack.

“Ianto,” says Jack, his ugly voice floating from the doorway. “My office,” he says, and walks off. 

Jack’s office. Ianto will be sacked. The end. Retcon. No more Lisa, no more—he can smell her, oil and the sick smell of viscera (she was still human, she was, he can smell it). She used to smell—that perfume she wore—Lily of the Valley. He can’t remember how it smelled. It won’t matter, after retcon. It will just be perfume.

He will wake up with oil under his nails and his cheek swollen and it won’t mean anything. Jack will win. 

“Ianto!” roars Jack. 

Last chance. Ianto grabs a knife, Owen’s knife, six-inch pocket knife with a black metal handle. Thick as a bone from Lisa’s wrist, heavy in his pocket. 

Ianto walks up to Jack’s office. Jack leans back in his chair: chair on two legs, his feet on the desk, stomach exposed: the soft underbelly. 

Ianto knows that Jack can fight. No chance now, even as he clenches his hands in his pockets around the hasp of the knife. His hands ache. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” says Jack. 

Ianto shrugs.

Jack swings out of his chair, walks around the desk, and slaps Ianto. Same cheek as Lisa. “Not good enough,” he says. “You nearly get everyone killed because you think you’re in _love_ , you had damn well better be able to explain yourself afterward.”

“What do you want me to say?” Ianto’s voice is raspy and awful. 

“I’m sorry?” Jack suggests, sarcastic. 

“Fuck you,” Ianto rasps. 

He thinks Jack will slap him again, but he doesn’t. He sits back down instead, same position, as if he’s enjoying this. 

“So,” says Jack. “Imperiling life and limb. Nearly destroying the world. Good work, Ianto.” 

“You shot Lisa,” says Ianto. 

Jack rolls his eyes. He’s out of reach, over there, but Ianto can feel the knife in his pocket. Comfort as it slides under his fingers. 

“So,” says Jack. “Your options. You can leave Torchwood. You’ll have to take retcon. Three-four years worth, I think. Forget all about us. Forget Torchwood One. Forget Lisa. Probably sounds pretty good right now.” 

Ianto closes his eyes. No. God. As it is Ianto will hurt forever, but he can’t, he can’t forget Lisa. He can’t—but he doesn’t have a choice. He feels sick, light-headed, God, he doesn’t have a choice. He can taste metal and engine grease and he wants to die. Forgetting would be worse than dying. 

“Do you want to leave Torchwood, Ianto?” Jack asks, impersonally curious. 

He wants to twist the knife, Ianto thinks, the bastard, but his mouth is shaping “No.” He can’t get any breath behind it but Jack must have read it off his lips, because the front legs of the chair click on the ground and Ianto can feel Jack leaning forward, Jack’s breath on his face, (close as Lisa this morning). Ianto can’t swallow. 

“The problem,” says Jack, his breath thick and ugly against Ianto’s closed eyes, “is that we can’t trust you. I can’t trust you. Who knows what you’ll do? Who will you hide in our basement next?”

Ianto’s shaking his head, throat too thick the breath. Jack touches his cheek and Ianto’s eyes snap open and he gasps, as if drowning. “I wouldn’t,” he chokes. “I love—loved Lisa.” Pleading. 

“Who knows who else you’d love?” 

Ianto shakes his head again, eyes shut, face twisting. Jack slaps him again and Ianto’s eyes jerk open. “Focus,” Jack orders, that look— _You have to shoot her, Ianto_ —that ugly look on his face. “I have a solution.”

Ianto tries to look interrogative.

“You can sleep with me,” says Jack, leaning back in his chair again, hands behind his head. 

Ianto giggles and whimpers and gasps. He can taste oil and bile on his tongue. “You—are—joking,” he gasps, spacing the words around nausea. 

“No.” And God, God, so smug, Ianto wants to kill him, sitting there stomach exposed, throat exposed, head tilted back near laughter. 

“I think—I think this is illegal,” Ianto whispers, as if that matters now. 

“Outside the government,” says Jack. He leans forward, as much as he can still tilted back in his chair. “There’s retcon,” he says, dripping generosity. 

Ianto shakes his head. “No”—no sound in his voice again. 

“Then come over here.” 

Ianto feels like he’s floating, off-balance as he stumbles around the desk, bangs his hip on the corner. Jack sets his chair back on all four legs but sprawls, head lolling, legs loose. Relaxed. If Ianto grabbed for his knife—but no, wait, wait. “What,” Ianto whispers, jaw stiff. “What do you—?” He can’t finish.

“Kiss me,” says Jack. Ianto wavers, frozen. His lips feel numb and his tongue swollen and he tastes metal. Jack cups Ianto’s cheeks and pulls him down to kiss, or at least places his stiff lips to Jack’s. Jack rubs his thumbs around Ianto’s ears and touches his tongue to Ianto’s lips and caresses his neck, like a lover. 

“I hate you,” Ianto tries to gasp, but Jack presses his tongue into Ianto’s mouth and Ianto can’t breathe and he’s crying again. Tears are endless, choking and sobbing with Jack’s hands running down his shuddering ribs, his hips, pulling Ianto’s legs apart so he straddles Jack’s thighs. 

He’s hard, the bastard, Jack is fucking getting off on this. Ianto would bite Jack’s tongue but Jack is kissing his face now, lapping up the tears, one hand clenched in Ianto’s hair and the other rubbing the small of his back.

“Not so bad, hmm?”

“Fuck you!” 

Ianto’s muscles tremble with tension. Jack kisses the nape of his neck and runs his hand down Ianto’s stiff knotted arms, uncurling Ianto’s fists. Shudders run up Ianto’s arms and down his spine; he’s crumbling. One loose hand presses to Jack’s stomach.

Hard and soft through his t-shirt: firm, but it could cut like cheese, one stab of a six-inch blade, and Ianto can almost feel the metal (like Lisa’s cheek; he can smell Lisa, the human viscera). He retches into Jack’s shoulder. 

“Shh,” says Jack. He strips off Ianto’s suit coat and slides his hands under Ianto’s shirt, up his chest, loosing the tie. Ianto is not numb as he thought, Jack’s fingers leave trails like barbed feathers until Ianto presses into Jack so hard that Jack has to remove his hand. 

Jack touches his face again, roughly wiping it clean and kissing Ianto’s slack lips. He pulls Ianto’s tie off (it snakes between their bodies) and slides off Ianto’s trousers without resistance. 

The knife in the trouser pocket clangs on the floor (metal on metal, metal on metal, Ianto shivers and clings to Jack’s neck and is so far gone he can’t even want to die). Jack rubs circles in his back. “Lisa,” Ianto chokes. “Lisa—”

“Shh,” Jack says again, brushing one hand into Ianto’s hair, curling at the nape of his neck. Ianto’s eyes hurt from tears, and his throat, his hands, everything. 

He’s so engrossed in his own pain that he scarcely feels it when Jack slides the syringe into his arm. 

Retcon, thinks Ianto. He wants to curse and flail with wrath, but it feels as though Jack has packed him full of eiderdown. Fluffy, loose and empty. He can’t feel. He can finally breathe, and his tears sting his eyes but they don’t taste of oil. 

He falls asleep. 

***

Ianto wakes up the next morning in a bed that is not his, in boxers that are not his, clean and empty. He still wants to die. No. He ought to want to die but he can’t feel it anymore. He can’t feel anything. Lisa is dead and all he feels are satin sheets and a sore throat and a thick limpness, like a shirt washed too often. His hands hurt. 

There’s a soft thunk, thunk, thunk. Like Lisa’s heartbeat, except too even, too soft, only similar in the metal-flesh clunk. “Morning, Ianto,” says Jack, and Ianto turns his head to see Jack sitting in a chair a few feet from the bed, tossing an open pocket knife in one hand. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. 

“You retconned me,” says Ianto, mourning the forgetting of Lisa and Torchwood and most of his life. 

“No,” says Jack. “I gave you a sedative.” 

It occurs to Ianto that if he is mourning forgetting he hasn’t forgotten. He remembers everything up to the syringe, at least. Not how he ended up in Jack’s bed, though. “Did you have your way with me while I slept?” he asks, trying to care. 

“Not unless washing you up counts.”

With Jack it might. Ianto tries to decide if he has the energy to sit up. “Waiting for me to wake up, then?”

“No.” Jack closes the knife (thunk) and tosses in to Ianto. It lands heavy on the comforter, a puff of air against Ianto’s cheek. Black-handled. Ianto’s knife. The would-be murder weapon. “It was just a test.”

Ianto picks up the knife, two fingered. He drops it on Jack’s bedside table. “What if I failed?” 

“I’d retcon you.”

“You’d be dead.”

Jack smirks. Ianto closes his eyes and turns his face to the wall. “I hate you.” His voice trembles. No tears. He wants Jack to go away, but Jack sits next to him and touches his hair. Ianto’s out of bed in seconds, across the room. He doesn’t want Jack touching him. 

“You’re sure you don’t want the retcon.”

“Yes,” says Ianto, hunting frantically for his clothes. 

“There’s a suit for you on the table.”

Ianto’s fingers trembles as he dresses. There are crescent scabs on his palms. No, he doesn’t want retcon, he doesn’t, _doesn’t_. 

“Ianto,” says Jack. “If you ever need me—”

“Yessir,” blurts Ianto, jerking his tie so tight he nearly chokes. “Yessir. Which way is out?”

“Up the ladder. Myfanwy needs someone to look after her, if—”

Ianto slams the hatch as he leaves. He lathers his hands for forever, until even he can see no oil on the water, and spends the day with Myfanwy making sure she is clean of oil and blood, too. 

Myfanwy doesn’t try to comfort him when he cries. 

***

Ianto goes to Jack first because he is empty, later as proof of loyalty (to himself or to Jack?), and then as an apology. It is months before he can take Jack’s offer as a gift.


End file.
